Food for thought

My husband gets free veggies that can't be sold from the store for his feral hog trap. Since I abhor waste I usually find stuff that's usable, if one knows how to do it. Few people nowadays know or care. Today I rescued a big pile of green beans.

I cooked up half of them. First I cut off the ends of the beans and culled any really gross ones. But I left those that looked a bit wilted or had rust spots on them. I know that with proper cooking, they'll turn out lovely. After frying some chopped up bacon and adding a chopped yellow bell pepper (got a ton of them that I didn't want to waste either), I put some sesame oil and spice with the bean mixture and simmered for 3 or 4 hours. Here's how they looked after an hour or so.

You can still see a little of the rust on some of them and they're not real tender yet. But eventually they got yummy. Forgot to take an after photo, but here's some that are cold in a leftovers container tonight. Plump and green and tender. And tasty. Not a rust spot anywhere but some of the more shriveled ones still aren't plump. They taste great though, so it doesn't bother me.

Imagine what a treat that would be to starving people somewhere in the world! I read somewhere that 40% of all food grown in The US ends up in the garbage. Tomorrow off to CMO.